When it looked as if Bridgeport might renege on the terms of a land swap with Trumbull to build the Fairchild Wheeler Multi-Magnet School, it was McDonald who helped settle an impasse between Herbst and his longtime adversary Bill Finch.

At the time in 2012, McDonald was Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s general counsel, Finch was Bridgeport’s mayor and Herbst Trumbull’s first selectman.

Finch balked at giving up 20 acres of land for a Trumbull greenway initiative that was home to a city parks department garage and office space.

“I wanted to try to make the deal better for Bridgeport,” Finch recalled Tuesday. “Andrew said, ‘A deal’s a deal and you’ve got to stick with it.’ ”

Herbst publicly thanked the governor’s office for interceding in the border dispute at the time.

Related Stories

“I want to thank Governor Malloy, Andrew McDonald and Christopher Drake of Governor Malloy’s Office, Graham Stevens from the Office of Policy and Management, officials from the (state) Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, as well as our town attorneys in finalizing the terms of this lease agreement,” Herbst said. “I am confident that the Trumbull Town Council will recognize the hard work and diligence of our state and local officials in completing this lease agreement.”

That stands in stark contrast to Herbst’s recent criticism of McDonald’s judicial and legislative record, in which he called on the General Assembly to reject Malloy’s pick to lead the seven-member state Supreme Court.

Herbst, who is one of a dozen GOP gubernatorial hopefuls, said his prior praise of McDonald wasn’t contradictory. He said that the parks department garage at the center of the dispute still hasn’t been transferred to Trumbull, and that Finch and McDonald were in cahoots dating back to their time as state senators.

“Shortly after I praised Justice McDonald for his involvement as legal counsel in the land transfer between Trumbull and Bridgeport — a decision that was unanimously blessed by the Connecticut General Assembly, Bill Finch reneged in bad faith,” Herbst said. “Justice McDonald reversed his position in favor of Mr. Finch as soon as his former Senate colleague was looking for a favor. This reversal happened as soon as politics entered the equation. This is illustrative and emblematic of the concerns I have raised. A person that is this political does not have the unbiased nature required to lead the state’s top court.”

McDonald, who is poised to become the first openly gay chief justice in the nation if he is confirmed by the Legislature, declined to comment. He’s been an associate justice of the high court since 2013.

Finch, who was ousted by fellow Democrat Joe Ganim in the 2015 Democratic primary and is the new executive director of the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, said McDonald was an honest broker in the land deal.

“He is a man of utmost integrity,” Finch said. “I can’t say that about everybody involved in the process. That’s the kind of person I would love to see running our state Supreme Court.”

Herbst stood by his criticism of McDonald, saying that the justice also should have recused himself from ruling on the constitutionality of the state’s death penalty, a repeal that he advocated for when he was in the Senate.